Ekoi, the French cycling accessory brand that is well known for supplying helmets and sunglasses to a portion of the pro peloton, appears to have a new product up its sleeve.
On the bikes of the French continental team, Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur, a wild new pair of road pedals has been spotted, with a platform that looks about twice as long as existing popular models from Shimano and Look.
French website LeCycle.fr first spotted them, reporting that they will be known as the Ekoi PW8, offer an 8mm stack height, and can save eight watts. That's a significant saving for anyone, not least a pro rider, but it's unclear what the saving is made against.
According to the LeCycle report, that figure came directly from Ekoi's CEO Jean-Christophe Rattel, who also confirmed that the pedals have been in testing with both the Nice Métropole Côte d'Azur team as well as Spanish UCI ProTeam Burgos BH since December.
Rattel is also quoted as saying that the pedals have been presented to Ineos Grenadiers and UAE Team Emirates, although it's unclear what the outcomes of those conversations were.
He also admitted that the pedals require a new shoe design in order to work, suggesting the cleats - of which details are currently unavailable - won't work with your standard three-bolt road shoes, nor the four-bolt shoes made available for Speedplay users.
Cyclingnews reached out to Ekoi for information, who confirmed the pedals' existence and that we'd be waiting until September for their release, but shied away from providing any specifics: "For the moment we can't give more information, it's teasing."
From the images alone, we can't discern a huge amount. We've scoured our photo libraries from recent races and scoured the team's social media channels to try and get some close-ups. We've drawn a blank on detail shots, but the team's Instagram has a handful of images that show off the pedals from afar.
The platform of the pedal is frankly enormous by the standards set by Look and Shimano. Despite that, it's safe to assume they won't be overly heavy since they look skeletal in their structure.
They're not Crankbrothers Eggbeater skeletal, but the pedal's design is made up of two large loops, which extend to the front and rear of the thin central axle. The rear loop appears slightly bigger than the front, and there's a small raised section at the rear which we believe to be the retention spring mechanism.
We'll certainly be keeping an eye out in the paddocks for these to try and find out more, but we expect we'll be waiting until September for key data such as weight, price, and where that eight-watt saving was found.
